4 Companies That Are Nailing Social Media Recruiting

Is your organization using social media to attract top talent? According to a recent survey from Jobvite, 93% of organizations use social networks to recruit new candidates. But there’s a silver lining for those in the 7%: of those recruiters who are using social media, only 18% consider themselves to be doing so effectively.

So if your organization hasn’t yet made the leap into the future, you may not be that disadvantaged. You just need to make sure you pick up your social media skills quickly to catch up with the rest of the pack. In fact, you really need to move fast, because 73% of organizations are planning to increase their investment in social media as part of their recruitment strategies, according to the Jobvite survey.

One of the easiest ways to learn how to be an effective social media recruiter is by studying some of the brands who are doing it the best. Without further ado, let’s explore four of them.

Based in Switzerland, Nestlé is one of the world’s largest suppliers of nutritional consumer goods. The multinational conglomerate has offices (and job opportunities) all over the world, and it uses social media masterfully to make sure they’re filled by the best qualified candidates.

Nestlé primarily targets two geographic regions with respect to job listings: the United States and the United Kingdom. Smartly, the company maintains a profile for each on both Facebook and Twitter. This streamlines the onboarding process, ensuring U.S.-based candidates don’t unknowingly shoot for jobs in the U.K. and vice versa.

What’s more, Nestlé also maintains presences on YouTube and LinkedIn, creating even more opportunities for job seekers to stumble over its openings.

What’s the best way to connect with potential job seekers on social media? For Zappos, the footwear e-commerce juggernaut, it involves building your own social network of sorts and instructing interested candidates to sign up.

In May 2014, Zappos launched Zappos Insiders, which is essentially a social network that Zappos fans can join to find out more about the company and get to know what makes it tick. According to the company’s website, Zappos Insiders receive top consideration for open positions. They also gain access to exclusive content and can pick the brains of current Zappos employees.

As you’d expect from a large corporation, Home Depot has busy social feeds. Despite all that clutter, the home improvement mega retailer is committed to providing its fans with personalized responses on its careers pages.

When potential employees reach out to Home Depot on their social career pages, the company makes certain it responds to their inquiries quickly. If nothing else, such behavior gives the impression to both the job applicant and the silent observer reading the feed that the company cares about the people it hires.

Unlike many businesses, Taco Bell isn’t satisfied to reach out to potential job seekers solely on Twitter and Facebook. In fact, the fast food company prides itself on maintaining presences on a multitude of social media platforms — including Pinterest.

It might not make sense for your organization to post up on Pinterest, Snapchat, or Periscope. But have you tried using Reddit, Quora, or StackOverflow? The more platforms your organization is recruiting on, the more likely top talent will find you.

But you first need to understand precisely where your potential candidates are hanging out online. For example, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to search for graphic designers on Vine. Go to Dribbble instead.

Practically the entire world lives on social media, or at least that’s how it seems. As the population gets younger and millennials continue infiltrating the workforce, we can expect more and more folks to find themselves on social networks. The sooner your organization realizes this and begins tapping into the talent that lives online, the quicker it will grow, and the stronger it will become.

The current and existing employees play a major role in social recruiting. Employee word can go a long when it comes to hiring new talent through social media and companies can leverage the social media power of the employees by deploying employee ambassador programs with advocacy tools such as SocioAdvocacy (www.socioadvocacy.com), this can give them the edge and hire better talent.